Reduce OneDrive Storage
- Dan Jakubiak
Students, faculty and staff have a limited amount of storage space (quota) in OneDrive. Follow this guide to learn different methods of reducing your storage consumption.
Separate Data
Faculty and Staff (including student employees): should not store personal data in OneDrive. Keeping your work life and personal life separate can be essential for success; your cloud storage is no different. Personal pictures, documents and pdfs, and spreadsheets should be stored in personal cloud storage accounts. Following this advice will help you reduce your usage of your work storage account.
Employees (including student employees) should remember that their OneDrive storage is covered by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Employees lose access to their university OneDrive when their employment ends.
Students: should not store personal data in OneDrive. The OneDrive storage provided to you by the university is reserved for academic materials. Personal pictures, documents, pdfs, and spreadsheets should be stored in personal cloud storage accounts. Following this advice will help you reduce your usage of your university storage account.
Students must remember that when they separate from the university, their OneDrive will be permanently deleted. When separating from the university, through graduation, failure to register, etc., you will be notified of your impending account deletion and be given instructions for exporting your information.
Find your largest files
Visit https://uconn-my.sharepoint.com/largestfiles
This page shows your OneDrive files listed from largest to smallest. Review your larger files and decide which are necessary to keep, and which ones can be deleted.
Data Hoarding
Deleting files can be hard. The term “data hoarders” is used lovingly among the community of people who hold onto all the data that they can. However, there are good reasons to rid your storage of old data.*
PII and HIPPA
There are times when we need to collect personal information, there’s no avoiding it. There is however a time to rid ourselves of that data and therefore rid ourselves of the responsibility of holding that data. It’s important to decide when it’s no longer appropriate to hold someone’s data, such as when they leave the university.
Outdated information
As time goes on, technology and practices change; your instructions and data my no longer be accurate.
Unneeded Information
Deleting old data can be a culture shift. It may feel strange removing files that you’re used to keeping. It comes back to the question of, “do I really need this?” There may be value in retaining old files, but it’s appropriate to draw a line and decide that some data is just unnecessary.
*ITS understands that certain files are required by law to be held for a certain amount of time and sometimes require approval for deletion. Please reach out to techsupport@uconn.edu if you have any questions.